Heh, the Bulgarian Principality was the worst example of Serbia thinking it was a great power--what other nation would deny that a region had declared independence and pretend they still had control*? Yeah, Vasily was incredibly unpopular; Valov could have easily seized power and may have intended to do so. The conspiracy to kill Valov was well-funded and planned, which makes me agree with the Serbs of the time and say the Epirotes did it.
Apparently, for quite some time afterwards, they still had the Minister for Bulgaria as a Cabinet position, and pretty much threatened to boycott anywhere that recognised Bulgarian independence. A truly impressive display of wilfully disregarding reality in favour of what they sort of preferred. It would have been quite comical if it wasn't for the terrorist groups operating in Bulgaria and Macedonia alike... As for Valov, the Epirotes were by far the most obvious culprit - they had a pretty clear motive, since he was on the verge of taking Ioannina, and the resources to throw at it. They also probably had good reason to fear a Valov-run Serbia, which would be a lot more of a threat than Vasily's utter shambles.
Decadence leads to untenable government, it's as simple as that. Throughout history whenever a government becomes encumbered by its own bureaucracy the people will rise to restore its integrity**. From the Arab caliphates to the Austrian monarchy it is a proven fact that ostentatious, unwieldy governments will collapse, which is why the autocracy-wank of the TL bothers me so much. /political soapbox
Very true - the example of France in the 1800s is perhaps the clearest indication of this. There's a very fine line states have to tread between decentralisation and bureaucracy - the 'Golden Mean' - and when a state deviates from this, as happened in 1827, everything slides into anarchy. In a way, states are self-regulating: too much decentralisation creates a niche for a strong leader, but a decadent and overcentralised state causes uprisings and eventually a restoration of what Nahi called 'the bare bones of the state' under new leadership.
I forget just how much everyone in the Haemics hate each other--I don't know if you could write a plausible TL where everyone there gets along!
Herceg seems like the nicest nation of the bunch, but I'm sure they had some horrible atrocity they committed 600 years ago just like everyone else. Epirus just gets offended by anything that implies Serbia is succeeding; they wish they still had the Serbs at their feet like they did in 1822 (regardless of the fact that the Hungarians did the heavy lifting in that war).
I've certainly never seen one - there's just something about being on the border of East and West, North and South, that makes every little grievance a
casus belli. Herceg have been fairly low on the atrocity count, actually - but in fairness, that was mostly due to being overrun by every other state in turn, whilst their capture of Dubrovnik in 1774 was reportedly quite a brutal affair. Epirus, meanwhile, are pretty much driven foreign-policy-wise by anti-Serbianism, and as you say do seem to have a certain blindness about their relative importance in the Conflagration of the 1820s - they did take Kraljevo and Prijepolje, but that was about it as far as their contribution went.
Rhomania...I mean, their Greco-Roman cultural heritage is impressive, but they're so focused on the past they can't cope with present problems. Their vaunted Senate can't even handle a few thousand Turkish nomads with app tabs***.
Rhomania are pretty much living in a strange cross between an idealistic dreamworld and a brutal police state, seemingly with none of their politicians noticing this odd dichotomy. Any attempts by their army to restore order in the Turkish provinces just creates more problems than it solves, and they're not very good at stopping international support for the rebels either. Some commentators have identified them as a potential spot for Nahist revolution, too - they are getting a bit autocratic.
It's a shame about the populism in Wallachia; those movements always support the most passionate but least intelligent people from what I've seen. I would've thought considering the excellent peace they won they would've ignored 1820 more--but if they're still mad about that it logically follows they'd be furious about the loss of Drobeta. And they put up signs supporting the Brute of Buda? Really?? His destruction of Beograd was horrific by all accounts, and his campaign of attrition was only outmatched by Carlos the Terrible in that era.
I don't think they're annoyed about the peace of 1820, although they did see their gains in the Dobruja as a God-given right - I think it's more a problem with what happened after it, and in particular how the Hungarians and Serbs both conspired to deny them Temesvar at the Congress of Sarajevo. The Battle of Pleven is a bit of a sore point, too. And yes - these protestors seem to suffer from a certain blindness about exactly what kind of man Lajos was, just because it was Serbs and Bosnians that he was putting to the sword. They actually celebrate the fact that his campaigns in the Vojvodina and in Slavonia bled Serbia dry of manpower bit by bit, and crippled those areas so much that they're still recovering today, economically speaking.
The contrast between the backwards Haemics and progressive North even extends to their worldviews, apparently--nations like Poland and Britain look forward to technological innovation while all these countries fight 200-year-old wars!
With Hungary halfway between, torn between joining the North European Concert and having yet another go at trying to take over the whole of Transylvania/Erdely...